Reply #6: Yes, Robert Frosts's poem us generally misunderstood....

[Bridget Burke]

In "Mending Wall" the Poet says "something there is that doesn't love a wall." His flinty New England neighbor is the one who keeps repeating "good fences make good neighbors" & piling stone on stone.

....Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15719

(American Lit 102.)